Eight million people can watch the same TV show at night, but they can’t march in their town, hold up signs, or even write to their Senators? Democracy is not a spectator sport–get informed, be angry! This is why the economy is down–because we want everything to come to us in our isolated homes, because everyone only looks after themselves, because people with plenty of money have to have 2 or 3 jobs and houses while some people do not even have 1 job or 1 house. See outside yourselves, people!

Tell your Senators to stop letting the telecom companies off the hook! Stop this insanity and invasion of privacy–before you lose it all!

Surveillance has never brought heightened security. Community–not paranoia–brings prosperity. We are faring poorly economically because we are losing our freedoms: the freedom to think, speak, assemble, and travel.

No Compromise on Liberty

The legislative battle over gutting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will resume in the Senate in Washington on July 8.

Without a dramatic turnaround, it appears we will lose this important fight in the Senate over the gutting of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

While we greatly appreciate the valiant efforts of senators like Feingold and Dodd to improve the legislation these efforts should not and will not provide political cover for any senator that says ‘yes’ to any final bill with warrantless wiretapping or immunity for telecommunications companies that broke the law.

Although we will urge senators to vote for amendments to improve the bill, the bottom line for the ACLU is that no president should have the power to monitor the phones and emails of Americans without a warrant, and telecommunications companies should not be let off the hook. No president should have the power to pardon companies that broke the law. Tell your senators the bottom line: no immunity, no warrantless spying.

Ron Paul–the only candidate taking a stand on the looming North American Union (NAU). Learn more.

The North American Union – You Could Be Voting Your Rights Away

(NaturalNews) One issue that is conspicuously absent from the rhetoric of the presidential candidates is the North American Union (NAU). The questions of immigration and border security are frequently raised and the candidates claim to realize the need for a clear immigration policy and effort to secure the borders of the United States. Yet when you begin to understand the purposes of the North American Union and the agenda of its proponents, you will understand why this will never happen. And you may also begin to see that you are being manipulated by the major candidates.

The NAU, a goal of the Council on Foreign Relations, follows a plan laid out by Robert Pastor. It is currently promoted by the Bush administration to expand the size and scope of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). Its goal is to effectively create a North American trading block by erasing the borders between the U.S., Mexico and Canada resulting in free, unimpeded movement of people and goods across those borders. It is also a political union that would integrate the governments of the three countries. And clearly it is an economic union with the intention of equalizing the wages and standard of living of all but the ruling elitists.

Sounds a lot like the European Union, doesn’t it? There are even plans for a common currency called the amero. But there is one glaring difference. The people of the United States have never been asked if they want to become integrated with Mexico and Canada, two countries of enormously different laws, culture, economic systems, standards of living, and acceptance of the role of government.

The European Union followed years of open debate at all levels, intense coverage of the ramifications and implications in major media, and a vote of the people.

History and Origins of NAU

President Bush signed the Declaration of Quebec City in April, 2001, making a “commitment to hemispheric integration”. After Hugo Chavez of Venezuela voiced opposition, these plans were scaled back to include only North America.

The Independent Task Force on North America, a project organized by the Council on Foreign Relations and co-chaired by Robert Pastor, was launched in October, 2004. This group published two documents: Trinational Call for a North American Economic and Security Community by 2010 (March, 2005), and its final report Building a North American Community (May, 2005). This Task Force had as its central recommendation the establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community. The boundaries of this community would be defined by a common external tariff and outer security perimeter. Also called for is the replacing of all three branches of the US government with a North American version effectively ending U.S. representative government.

In March 2005, at their summit meeting in Waco, Texas; Bush, President Fox of Mexico and Prime Minister Martin of Canada issued a joint statement announcing the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). The creation of this agreement was never submitted to Congress for discussion or decision. The U.S. Department of Commerce merely created a new division implementing working groups to advance a North American Union agenda. This agenda included movement of goods, finances, e-commerce, environment, business facilitation, food and agriculture, and health. The result is an action agreement to be implemented immediately and directly by regulations, without any envisioned Congressional debate or oversight.

In September 2006, Rep. Virgil Goode (Va), Rep. Ron Paul (Tx), Rep. Walter Jones (NC), and Rep. Tom Tancredo (Co) introduced House Concurrent Resolution 487, expressing concerns about the NAU. Resolution was passed by the House of Representatives with the Senate concurring that the U.S. should not enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada; the U.S. should not engage in the construction of the NAFTA Superhighway System, and the President should indicate strong opposition to these or any other proposals that threaten the sovereignty of the U.S.

In October 2006, Congressman Paul formally denounced the formation of the SPP and the plans for the North American Union and the SPP as “an unholy alliance of foreign consortiums and officials from several governments”. Paul says that the real issue raised by the SPP is nation sovereignty. “Once again, decisions that affect millions of Americans are not being made by those Americans themselves, or even by their elected representatives in Congress. Instead, a handful of elites use their government connections to bypass national legislatures and ignore our Constitution – which expressly grants Congress the sole authority to regulate international trade.” In this speech Paul predicts that the NAU will become a sleeper issue for the 2008 election, stating that “any movement toward a NAU diminishes the ability of average Americans to influence the laws under which they must live.”

A report authored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIC) was presented to all three governments in September 2007. CSIC is a political influence group of internationalists who have crafted many of the government policies of the past several years. At the core of the report is its plan for America’s future, North American “economic integration” and “labor mobility”. The plan for government integration is also revealed as the report states: “to remain competitive in the global economy, policymakers must devise forward-looking, collaborative policies that integrate governments”. Also called for is the adoption of “unified North American regulatory standards”.

Features of NAU:

The Trans-Texas Corridor and the NAFTA Superhighway

The NAFTA Superhighway and its entry point at the trans-Texas corridor were first proposed in 2002. It consists of a 1,200 foot wide highway that also carries utilities such as electricity, petroleum and water as well as railway tracks and fiber-optic cables. When completed, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the U.S. through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union. With Mexican drivers and without the involvement of the teamsters union, the Mexican trucks will drive straight into the heart of the US, crossing the border in fast lanes, and checked only by a new electronic system. The first customs stop will be the new Smart Port complex in Kansas City. From there the trucks may disperse into the U.S. or continue northward into Canada, again crossing the border with only an electronic checkpoint.

Millions of acres of land for the completion of this highway will be taken under the new laws of eminent domain.

A government pilot program has allowed Mexican trucking companies to make deliveries anywhere in the U.S. since April 2007, even before the completion of the superhighway. There is no limit on the number of trucks the 100 companies in the pilot program can operate. Eventually all Mexican trucking companies are to be granted the same access. These Mexican drivers are paid substantially less that their U.S. counterparts, their operations are not regulated, and they are driving on U.S. taxpayer subsidized roads.

The Amero

This is the name of what may be the North American Union’s counterpart to the euro. It was first proposed by Canadian economist Herbert G. Grubel in his book The Case for the Amero published in 1999, the same year the euro became currency. Robert Pastor supported Grubel’s idea in his book Toward A North American Community published in 2001. If implemented, the Amero’s debut may come later in the progression of the NAU, with exchange rates that depend on market forces at the time, after the economies of the three countries have been integrated and homogenized.

The North American Plan for Avian and Pandemic Influenza

Finalized and released at the September 2007 summit of the SPP, this plan calls for a “comprehensive coordinated North American approach during outbreaks of influenza.” It gives authority to international officials “beyond the health sector to include a coordinated approach to critical infrastructure protection,” including “border and transportation issues”.

It sets up a “senior level Coordinating Body to facilitate the effective planning and preparedness within North America for a possible outbreak of avian and/or human influenza pandemic under the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).” The SPP is to act as “decision-makers.” “The chair of the SPP Coordinating Body will rotate between each national authority on a yearly basis” resulting in foreign decision making for Americans in two out of every three years.

The plan suggests that these powers will include “the use of antivirals and vaccines… social distancing measures, including school closures and the prohibition of community gatherings, isolation and quarantine.”

Council on Foreign Relations

Since its inception in 1921, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has attracted men and women of power and influence. Its stated intentions are to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty of the national independence of the United States. The ultimate, declared aim of the CFR is to create a one-world government, and to make the U.S. a part of it. The stated intentions of the CFR are clearly treasonous to the U.S. Constitution.

The influence of the CFR is wide. Not only does it have members in the U.S. government, but its influence has also spread to other vital areas of American life. Members have run, or are running, NBC and CBS, the New York Times, and The Washington Post, and many other important newspapers. The leaders of Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Business Week, and numerous other publications are CFR members.

The organization’s members also dominate the political world. U.S. presidents since Franklin Roosevelt have been CFR members with the exception of Ronald Reagan. The organization’s members also dominate
the academic world, top corporations, unions and military. They are on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Rudy Guiliani are all either members of the CFR or have close ties with it. Mike Huckabee is reportedly not a member, but following his interaction with the group in September, he has become a favored candidate in the eyes of the media. Republican Ron Paul is the only remaining significant candidate who does not have ties with the CFR. He has has voiced opposition to the NAU for several years.

Where Do You Stand on This Issue?

There is an ideological battle being waged between the forces supporting globalism and the forces supporting national sovereignty. If you plan to participate in the 2008 presidential election, you will need to answer these questions for yourself: Do you believe in the timelessness of the Constitution, or do you believe that the Constitution has served its usefulness and it’s time for another model for government? Are you in favor of international government and more regulation by the United Nations, or do you favor continuation of the institutions that have served the U.S. in the past? Do you want big government with its attendant costs and regulations, or do you favor small government that allows for self direction?

About the author

Barbara Minton is a school psychologist by trade, a published author in the area of personal finance, a breast cancer survivor using “alternative” treatments, a born existentialist, and a student of nature and all things natural.

Because when wealth is hoarded by the few, the many poor are a threat.

Let’s arrest the poor rather than keep them content and able to survive.

And then let’s take their genetic information (their DNA) as soon as we arrest them, even if they are never convicted.

Ticket quotas are common knowledge. Are arrest quotas far behind. “It was only a misunderstanding, officer!”–Too bad–once your genetic information is taken away, you can’t get it back. Well, if you scrounge up some money, maybe you can get your eyeballs switched like in “Minority Report.”

And this is the man people were praying would come in like a white knight to run for president?

—–

Bloomberg Wants to Get in Your Genes

Compared to the present mayor’s contempt for civil liberties, Giuliani was a piker

by Nat Hentoff

February 5th, 2008 6:19 PM

Our humble mayor, Mike Bloomberg, has been basking in the glow of largely unmerited approval around the country, ranging from his purported resurrection of the city’s school system (many parents and students beg to differ) to his handling of the city budget, among other feats of the managerial prowess that has made him a billionaire. Encouraged by the buzz, Bloomberg has been consulting specialists in national election law even as Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey diligently studies the terrain for a possible Bloomberg vault to the White House.Even that inflated kingmaker, the Reverend Al Sharpton, has knighted the mayor for diminishing the “tone of ugliness”in this city.

Since Bloomberg has given his police commissioner, Ray Kelly, free rein to curtail civil liberties (and has warmly encouraged Kelly to try succeeding him at Gracie Mansion), Sharpton might have mentioned one particularly noticeable and ugly mark of the Bloomberg regime, described here by Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union: “The black community continues to bear the brunt of police stops, [and] blacks continue to be singled out for stops that don’t ever result in an arrest.”

(However, a cop would have to be a rookie policeman recently moved from Juneau, Alaska, to stop and frisk the renowned Al Sharpton.)

But now our mayor has proposed an assault on the most fundamental constitutional rights of New Yorkers—one that exceeds the contempt for the Constitution shown by any mayor in all the years I’ve been covering civil liberties in this city. Not even Rudy Giuliani thought of this one, which was reported by Jim Dwyer in the January 19 issue of The New York Times:

“This week, the mayor proposed that everyone arrested for any crime in New York City—before the case has been judged—should be required to provide a sample of DNA.” (Emphasis added.)

Under New York State law, DNA can only be collected from those convicted of felonies and certain misdemeanors. But in New York City, the mayor’s proposal would force anyone who’s merely arrested to give up a DNA sample for a data bank even before they can appear in court (as the Constitution requires).

The New York Civil Liberties Union release, “Myths and Facts About DNA Data Banks,”makes clear that each of us “has a privacy interest in the information contained in their DNA—it is information you would not want falling into the hands of employers, insurance companies, and other actors who could use it against you. . . . While a fingerprint is a two-dimensional representation of the surface of your fingers, DNA contains a tremendous amount of sensitive information about you, including your susceptibility to certain diseases, family history and ancestry.”

What Bloomberg wants to do is take away our Fifth Amendment guarantees of “due process of law”—the foundation of our system of justice—and our Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”Having your fundamental privacy ransacked before you ever get the chance to defend yourself against a criminal charge not only magnifies Giuliani’s reckless legacy of imperial executive power in this city, but also sharply reveals Bloomberg as a presidential aspirant who will continue the Bush-Cheney administration’s subversion of the Bill of Rights.

As of this writing, I’ve seen very little press attention given to this omen of what Bloomberg’s America would be like. Where are the outraged editorials? Where are the protests from the city’s lawyers? And will there be a response from the New York City Bar Association—the nation’s most influential, as far as civil liberties are concerned—which has condemned past “revisions”of the Constitution by the Bush-Cheney regime in the most acutely critical terms.

New York City’s criminal-justice coordinator, John Feinblatt, told Jim Dwyer that the mayor’s proposed DNA search-and-seizure policy “will prevent crime,”and that even though there’d be some resistance on the basis of privacy concerns, its adoption was “inevitable.”

Do you agree? It would be extremely interesting to find out what the current presidential candidates of both parties think of Bloomberg’s proposal. Then again, the mayor’s total disdain for due process isn’t entirely surprising in view of his enthusiastic support for his police commissioner’s actions before and during the 2004 Republican National Convention here. As I described it in an earlier column, “J. Edgar Bloomberg: COINTELPRO in NY” (April 24, 2007), teams of undercover New York City police officers were sent around the country, as well as to Canada and Europe, to infiltrate and spy on not only anti–Iraq War groups, but also such potential dangers to national security as church groups, environmental organizations, and anti-death-penalty groups.

And during the NYPD’s decidedly extra-constitutional arrests during the Republican convention, those people incarcerated (not all of them protesters) were asked by police what they thought of George W. Bush and questioned on their other political views. After forceful objections by New Yorkers—and the New York Civil Liberties Union—the cops stopped violating the First Amendment with such questions, which were obviously none of their damn business. The mayor, of course, didn’t object to the policy of asking such questions.

As a further indication of J. Edgar Bloomberg and Ray Kelly’s need for a crash course on the Constitution, the New York Law Journal reported on February 16, 2007, that U.S. District Court Judge Charles S. Haight—who has had a busy time of it trying to force the NYPD to abide by the constitutional guidelines for police surveillance—charged the department with “egregious”spying on “political activity”after the Intelligence Division videotaped a protest by (I kid you not) the Coalition for the Homeless in front of Mayor Bloomberg’s residence.

If that Putin-style police surveillance was “egregious,”what is the word for probing the most intimately personal information of New Yorkers after they are arrested—and only arrested?

With any luck, the mayor may have unintentionally performed an educational service, quickening interest in other investigative uses and abuses of DNA by the police. Next week: What the mayor obviously doesn’t know about the maze of problems in implementing his proposal. For example: Such massive expansion of DNA testing greatly increases the likelihood of error that is already inherent in the system. Or perhaps he simply doesn’t care—until, God forbid, there’s a mix-up, and a perpetrator’s DNA is mislabled as Michael Bloomberg’s.

On the January 23, 2008, Letters page, Ethan Young calls me “reactionary”for being pro-life. On the same page, Joseph Carducci provides one of the reasons I am indeed pro-life. He writes: “Yes, Barack Obama is half-black and talks about change, but he does not want to change Roe v. Wade, a ruling that eliminates more black people than any other cause of death.”

When the police grow this large, anyone not in the police will become a criminal.

WHY is this not front page news?

WHY is this being conducted through private-sector partnerships, not subject to public scrutiny?

WHY is there no outrage?

WHY is our government preparing to declare martial law? Will it happen, say, right before the election?

Write to your newspapers, people. Do not take this lying down. Then vote Ron Paul.

Oh, you think a woman will stop this? Clinton was on the board of Wal-Mart for 6 years while her husband was governor of Arkansas (discussed on Bill Moyer’s journal–I get the podcasts). Do you think she really cares about people? What has Wal-Mart done for wages, job stability, and quality of life for your community?

Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does — and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law. InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.

InfraGard started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats.

“Then the FBI cloned it,” says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years.

InfraGard itself is still an FBI operation, with FBI agents in each state overseeing the local InfraGard chapters. (There are now eighty-six of them.) The alliance is a nonprofit organization of private sector InfraGard members.

“We are the owners, operators, and experts of our critical infrastructure, from the CEO of a large company in agriculture or high finance to the guy who turns the valve at the water utility,” says Schneck, who by day is the vice president of research integration at Secure Computing.

“At its most basic level, InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector,” the InfraGard website states. “InfraGard chapters are geographically linked with FBI Field Office territories.”

In November 2001, InfraGard had around 1,700 members. As of late January, InfraGard had 23,682 members, according to its website, http://www.infragard.net, which adds that “350 of our nation’s Fortune 500 have a representative in InfraGard.”

To join, each person must be sponsored by “an existing InfraGard member, chapter, or partner organization.” The FBI then vets the applicant. On the application form, prospective members are asked which aspect of the critical infrastructure their organization deals with. These include: agriculture, banking and finance, the chemical industry, defense, energy, food, information and telecommunications, law enforcement, public health, and transportation.

FBI Director Robert Mueller addressed an InfraGard convention on August 9, 2005. At that time, the group had less than half as many members as it does today. “To date, there are more than 11,000 members of InfraGard,” he said. “From our perspective that amounts to 11,000 contacts . . . and 11,000 partners in our mission to protect America.” He added a little later, “Those of you in the private sector are the first line of defense.”

He urged InfraGard members to contact the FBI if they “note suspicious activity or an unusual event.” And he said they could sic the FBI on “disgruntled employees who will use knowledge gained on the job against their employers.”

In an interview with InfraGard after the conference, which is featured prominently on the InfraGard members’ website, Mueller says: “It’s a great program.”

The ACLU is not so sanguine.

“There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations — some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers — into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI,” the ACLU warned in its August 2004 report The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society.

InfraGard is not readily accessible to the general public. Its communications with the FBI and Homeland Security are beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act under the “trade secrets” exemption, its website says. And any conversation with the public or the media is supposed to be carefully rehearsed.

“The interests of InfraGard must be protected whenever presented to non-InfraGard members,” the website states. “During interviews with members of the press, controlling the image of InfraGard being presented can be difficult. Proper preparation for the interview will minimize the risk of embarrassment. . . . The InfraGard leadership and the local FBI representative should review the submitted questions, agree on the predilection of the answers, and identify the appropriate interviewee. . . . Tailor answers to the expected audience. . . . Questions concerning sensitive information should be avoided.”

One of the advantages of InfraGard, according to its leading members, is that the FBI gives them a heads-up on a secure portal about any threatening information related to infrastructure disruption or terrorism.

The InfraGard website advertises this. In its list of benefits of joining InfraGard, it states: “Gain access to an FBI secure communication network complete with VPN encrypted website, webmail, listservs, message boards, and much more.”

“We get very easy access to secure information that only goes to InfraGard members,” Schneck says. “People are happy to be in the know.”

On November 1, 2001, the FBI had information about a potential threat to the bridges of California. The alert went out to the InfraGard membership. Enron was notified, and so, too, was Barry Davis, who worked for Morgan Stanley. He notified his brother Gray, the governor of California.

“He said his brother talked to him before the FBI,” recalls Steve Maviglio, who was Davis’s press secretary at the time. “And the governor got a lot of grief for releasing the information. In his defense, he said, ‘I was on the phone with my brother, who is an investment banker. And if he knows, why shouldn’t the public know?’ ”

Maviglio still sounds perturbed about this: “You’d think an elected official would be the first to know, not the last.”

In return for being in the know, InfraGard members cooperate with the FBI and Homeland Security. “InfraGard members have contributed to about 100 FBI cases,” Schneck says. “What InfraGard brings you is reach into the regional and local communities. We are a 22,000-member vetted body of subject-matter experts that reaches across seventeen matrixes. All the different stovepipes can connect with InfraGard.”

Schneck is proud of the relationships the InfraGard Members Alliance has built with the FBI. “If you had to call 1-800-FBI, you probably wouldn’t bother,” she says. “But if you knew Joe from a local meeting you had with him over a donut, you might call them. Either to give or to get. We want everyone to have a little black book.”

This black book may come in handy in times of an emergency. “On the back of each membership card,” Schneck says, “we have all the numbers you’d need: for Homeland Security, for the FBI, for the cyber center. And by calling up as an InfraGard member, you will be listened to.” She also says that members would have an easier time obtaining a “special telecommunications card that will enable your call to go through when others will not.”

This special status concerns the ACLU.

“The FBI should not be creating a privileged class of Americans who get special treatment,” says Jay Stanley, public education director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program. “There’s no ‘business class’ in law enforcement. If there’s information the FBI can share with 22,000 corporate bigwigs, why don’t they just share it with the public? That’s who their real ‘special relationship’ is supposed to be with. Secrecy is not a party favor to be given out to friends. . . . This bears a disturbing resemblance to the FBI’s handing out ‘goodies’ to corporations in return for folding them into its domestic surveillance machinery.”

When the government raises its alert levels, InfraGard is in the loop. For instance, in a press release on February 7, 2003, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Attorney General announced that the national alert level was being raised from yellow to orange. They then listed “additional steps” that agencies were taking to “increase their protective measures.” One of those steps was to “provide alert information to InfraGard program.”

“They’re very much looped into our readiness capability,” says Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security. “We provide speakers, as well as do joint presentations [with the FBI]. We also train alongside them, and they have participated in readiness exercises.”

On May 9, 2007, George Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 entitled “National Continuity Policy.” In it, he instructed the Secretary of Homeland Security to coordinate with “private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate, in order to provide for the delivery of essential services during an emergency.”

Asked if the InfraGard National Members Alliance was involved with these plans, Schneck said it was “not directly participating at this point.” Hershman, chairman of the group’s advisory board, however, said that it was.

InfraGard members, sometimes hundreds at a time, have been used in “national emergency preparation drills,” Schneck acknowledges.

“In case something happens, everybody is ready,” says Norm Arendt, the head of the Madison, Wisconsin, chapter of InfraGard, and the safety director for the consulting firm Short Elliott Hendrickson, Inc. “There’s been lots of discussions about what happens under an emergency.”

One business owner in the United States tells me that InfraGard members are being advised on how to prepare for a martial law situation — and what their role might be. He showed me his InfraGard card, with his name and e-mail address on the front, along with the InfraGard logo and its slogan, “Partnership for Protection.” On the back of the card were the emergency numbers that Schneck mentioned.

This business owner says he attended a small InfraGard meeting where agents of the FBI and Homeland Security discussed in astonishing detail what InfraGard members may be called upon to do.

“The meeting started off innocuously enough, with the speakers talking about corporate espionage,” he says. “From there, it just progressed. All of a sudden we were knee deep in what was expected of us when martial law is declared. We were expected to share all our resources, but in return we’d be given specific benefits.” These included, he says, the ability to travel in restricted areas and to get people out. But that’s not all.

“Then they said when — not if — martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted,” he says.

I was able to confirm that the meeting took place where he said it had, and that the FBI and Homeland Security did make presentations there. One InfraGard member who attended that meeting denies that the subject of lethal force came up. But the whistleblower is 100 percent certain of it. “I have nothing to gain by telling you this, and everything to lose,” he adds. “I’m so nervous about this, and I’m not someone who gets nervous.”

Though Schneck says that FBI and Homeland Security agents do make presentations to InfraGard, she denies that InfraGard members would have any civil patrol or law enforcement functions. “I have never heard of InfraGard members being told to use lethal force anywhere,” Schneck says.

But one other InfraGard member corroborated the whistleblower’s account, and another would not deny it.

Christine Moerke is a business continuity consultant for Alliant Energy in Madison, Wisconsin. She says she’s an InfraGard member, and she confirms that she has attended InfraGard meetings that went into the details about what kind of civil patrol function — including engaging in lethal force — that InfraGard members may be called upon to perform.

“There have been discussions like that, that I’ve heard of and participated in,” she says.

Curt Haugen is CEO of S’Curo Group, a company that does “strategic planning, business continuity planning and disaster recovery, physical and IT security, policy development, internal control, personnel selection, and travel safety,” according to its website. Haugen tells me he is a former FBI agent and that he has been an InfraGard member for many years. He is a huge booster. “It’s the only true organization where there is the public-private partnership,” he says. “It’s all who knows who. You know a face, you trust a face. That’s what makes it work.”

He says InfraGard “absolutely” does emergency preparedness exercises. When I ask about discussions the FBI and Homeland Security have had with InfraGard members about their use of lethal force, he says: “That much I cannot comment on. But as a private citizen, you have the right to use force if you feel threatened.”

“We were assured that if we were forced to kill someone to protect our infrastructure, there would be no repercussions,” the whistleblower says. “It gave me goose bumps. It chilled me to the bone.”

Or weakens you for the next orchestrated “Problem,” or “Attack,” or “Emergency;” whatever.

They don’t want you to know the difference between what is a real threat or not.

Continual paranoia dulls the senses, as does continual complacency.

Reason alone keeps the mind sharp, keeps the body healthy and intact.

When everything is an Absolute Crisis, you will begin to shut down.

I reject the idea that we are all in a web of competition and need to constantly prove ourselves, constantly defend ourselves.

Humans with intrinsic human rights don’t have to justify themselves.

We have stopped being human a long time ago.

You se, the neocons moved too fast. I remember being in second or third grade and writing Christmas cards to US soldiers in Iraq during the first gulf conflict. I was in an elementary school that didn’t teach history, and made it out to believe I was in the best country in the world. That’s proof that growing up in New York can be just as provincial as growing up in Iowa or some small town. As a child, like everyone else, we had to be “educated” as to what war was, because it did not occur to us that it was natural or necessary, as it is spun today.
Then, in college, my generation, seeing how poorly this second war in Iraq is going, begins to question it, its necessity, its morality, its genesis, and how it can finally end. Which leads one back to wanting to know the truth behind what supposedly led us to war, the attacks on 9/11/2001, the events used to say that war was vital, urgently needed, the only tool at our disposal to promote our safety and liberty, not a last resort effort. When it is known that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that any possible aggressors in Iraq are more than likely not remotely connected to perpetrating the events of 9/11/2001 (especially if you consider such events to be an inside job or accomplished with foreknowledge and/or complicity on the part of the Administration[s]),

Neocons, you acted too soon. People in my generation remember Gulf I, remember how it was peddled as a video-game war, as a high technology easy solution, a quick, glorious war when in actuality there are no such things. Veterans with Gulf War syndrome from drinking aspartame-laced soda exposed to high temperatures remember how they were used as tools, and see how you are abusing contracts to keep troops in Iraq longer, how you are “waiving requirements” to try to meet your recruiting numbers, how you are talking about starting a draft–and how you think this will disappear in America’s media-and-chemical induced memory hole, so that our drugged silence will form the foundation for your “consent.” Aspartame puts holes in people’s brains and forms chemicals in the body that cause brain cancer. As Alex Jones has said, (paraphrasing), “Calling aspartame a poison would be paying it a compliment.” We know you’re trying to steal our freedoms by ruining our ability to think for ourselves. That’s why, today, health is a political act. That’s why you want our children to get autism with vaccines and cell phone signals, and people to get heart disease from taking cholesterol-lowering statins, though cholesterol has never been linked to heart disease. That’s why you deceptively label foods with up to .5g of trans fat–partially or fully hydrogenated fats–as being “trans fat” free, even when there is no safe level of trans fats for human consumption. That’s why you’re trying desperately to Genetically Modify all foods and erode organic farming standards. You are trying to incrementally weaken us. What doesn’t kill us will make us stronger? No, what doesn’t kill us will just act as the next obstacle for your “technologies” to work around, until there can be an efficient way to consentually kill us. Marijuana has never killed anyone; that’s why it’s illegal. It’s a weed and the profit margin is too low. Tobacco and chemical-laced cigarettes have killed millions through the cancers they have finally been shown to directly cause. Alcohol is toxic; it too is legal. These seemingly tangential points make sense when you see them as instruments to weakening the population and getting them to accept any form of misery, especially war. When people are allowed to eat healthy food, live in healthy homes, and provide for themselves–and I am not in any remote position of wealth or health, so I should know–that is when they can think for themselves. When people are saddled in debt and putting junk into their bodies, they are far easier to control and manipulate. Then they are surrounded by media that tries to prevent them from thinking about how they might not be in control of their lives.

We will not be lied to anymore, we will not be told that we need to die so others can profit, we will not be drafted.

We need an outcry every day; we need a Iraq Truth movement.

And we need all wars to end. We need to eliminate the banker’s incentives to start wars.

We have to choose–you really can’t have guns and butter, and you can’t eat guns. This should be obvious, but paper money won’t keep you warm when the power’s out, not even if you burn it by the wheelbarrowful.

THE LIE OF THE CENTURY

There is nothing new in a government lying to their people to start a war. Indeed because most people prefer living in peace to bloody and horrific death in war, any government that desires to initiate a war usually lies to their people to create the illusion that support for the war is the only possible choice they can make.President McKinley told the American people that the USS Maine had been sunk in Havana Harbor by a Spanish mine. The American people, outraged by this apparent unprovoked attack, supported the Spanish American War. The Captain of the USS Maine had insisted the ship was sunk by a coal bin explosion, investigations after the war proved that such had indeed been the case. There had been no mine.

FDR claimed Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack. It wasn’t. The United States saw war with Japan as the means to get into war with Germany, which Americans opposed. So Roosevelt needed Japan to appear to strike first. Following an 8-step plan devised by the Office of Naval Intelligence, Roosevelt intentionally provoked Japan into the attack. Contrary to the official story, the fleet did not maintain radio silence, but sent messages intercepted and decoded by US intercept stations. Tricked by the lie of a surprise attack, Americans marched off to war.

President Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin to send Americans off to fight in Vietnam. There were no torpedoes in the water in the Gulf. LBJ took advantage of an inexperienced sonar man’s report to goad Congress into escalating the Vietnam

It is inescapable historical reality that leaders of nations will lie to their people to trick them into wars they otherwise would have refused. It is not “conspiracy theory” to suggest that leaders of nations lie to trick their people into wars. It is undeniable fact.

This brings us to the present case.

Did the government of the United States lie to the American people, more to the point, did President Bush and his Neocon associates lie to Congress, to initiate a war of conquest in Iraq?

This question has been given currency by a memo leaked from inside the British Government which clearly indicates a decision to go to war followed by the “fixing” of information around that policy. This is, as they say, a smoking gun.

But the fact is that long before this memo surfaced, it had become obvious that the US Government, aided by that of Great Britain, was lying to create the public support for a war in Iraq.

First off is Tony Blair’s “Dodgy Dossier“, a document released by the Prime Minister that made many of the claims used to support the push for war. The dossier soon collapsed when it was revealed that much of it had been plagiarized from a student thesis paper that was 12 years old!

The contents of the dossier, however much they seemed to create a good case for invasion, were obsolete and outdated.

This use of material that could not possibly be relevant at the time is clear proof of a deliberate attempt to deceive.

Then there was the claim about the “Mobile biological weapons laboratories”. Proffered in the absence of any real laboratories in the wake of the invasion, photos of these trailers were shown on all the US Mainstream Media, with the claim they while seeming to lack anything suggesting biological processing, these were part of a much larger assembly of multiple trailers that churned out biological weapons of mass destruction.

This claim fell apart when it was revealed that these trailers were nothing more than hydrogen gas generators used to inflate weather balloons. This fact was already known to both the US and UK, as a British company manufactured the units and sold them to Iraq.

Colin Powell’s speech to the UN was itself one misstatement after another. Powell claimed that Iraq had purchased special aluminum tubes whose only possible use was in uranium enrichment centrifuges. Both CIA and Powell’s own State Department confirmed that the tubes were parts for missiles Saddam was legally allowed to have. Following the invasion, no centrifuges, aluminum or otherwise were found.

Powell also claimed to the United Nations that photos showed “Decontamination Vehicles”. But when United Nations inspectors visited the site after the invasion, they located the vehicles and discovered they were just firefighting equipment.

Powell claimed the Iraqis had illegal rockets and launchers hidden in the palm trees of Western Iraq. None were ever found.

Powell claimed that the Iraqis had 8,500 liters (2245 gallons) of Anthrax. None was ever found.

Powell claimed that Iraq was building long-range remote drones specifically designed to carry biological weapons. The only drones found were short-range reconnaissance drones.

Powell claimed that Iraq had an aggregate of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical and biological warfare agents. Powell gave no basis for that claim at all, and a DIA report issued the same time directly contradicted the claim. No biological or chemical weapons were found in Iraq following the invasion.

Powell claimed that “unnamed sources” confirmed that Saddam had authorized his field commanders to use biological weapons. No such weapons were ever used by the Iraqis to defend against the invasion and, of course, none were ever found in Iraq.

Powell claimed that 122mm warheads found by the UN inspectors were chemical weapons. The warheads were empty, and showed no signs of ever having contained chemical weapons.

Colin Powell’s UN debacle also included spy photos taken from high flying aircraft and spacecraft. On the photos were circles and arrows and labels pointing to various fuzzy white blobs and identifying them as laboratories and storage areas for Saddam’s massive weapons of mass destruction program. Nothing in the photos actually suggested what the blobby shapes were and inspections which followed the invasion, all of them turned out to be rather benign. In at least one case, the satellite Powell claimed had taken one of the pictures had actually been out of operation at the time. And many questioned why Powell was showing black and white photos when the satellites in use at the time over Iraq took color images.

Another piece of evidence consists of documents which President Bush referenced as in his 2003 State of the Union Speech. According to Bush, these documents proved that Iraq was buying tons of uranium oxide, called “Yellow Cake” from Niger. Since Israel had bombed Iraq’s nuclear power plant years before, it was claimed that the only reason Saddam would have for buying uranium oxide was to build bombs.

This hoax fell apart fast when it was pointed out that Iraq has a great deal of uranium ore inside their own borders and no need to import any from Niger or anywhere else. The I.A.E.A. then blew the cover off the fraud by announcing that the documents Bush had used were not only forgeries, but too obvious to believe that anyone in the Bush administration did not know they were forgeries!

In the end, the real proof that we were lied to about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction is that no weapons of mass destruction were ever found. That means that every single piece of paper that purported to prove that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was by default a fraud, a hoax, and a lie. There could be no evidence that supported the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. In a way, the existence of any faked documents about Iraq’s WMDs is actually an admission of guilt. If one is taking the time to create fake documents, the implication is that the faker is already aware that there are no genuine documents.

What the US Government had, ALL that they had, were copied student papers, forged “Yellow Cake” documents, balloon inflators posing as bioweapons labs, and photos with misleading labels on them. And somewhere along the line, someone decided to put those misleading labels on those photos, to pretend that balloon inflators are portable bioweapons labs, and to pass off stolen student papers as contemporary analysis.

And THAT shows an intention to deceive.

Lawyers call this “Mens Rea”, which means “Guilty Mind”. TV lawyer shows call it “Malice aforethought”. This means that not only did the Bush Administration lie to the people and to the US Congress, but knew they were doing something illegal at the time that they did it.

The President of the United States and his Neocon associates lied to the people of the United States to send them off on a war of conquest.

Defenders of the government will point to the cases listed at the top of the page as proof that lying to the people is a normal part of the leader’s job and we should all get used to it. And because “Everybody does it” that we should not single out the present administration. But this is madness. We do not catch all the murderers, yet when we catch a murderer, we deal with them as harshly as possible, in order to deter more murderers.

Right now, we have the criminals at hand. and, while other leaders in history have lied to start wars, for the first time in history, the lie stands exposed while the war started with the lies still rages on, to the death and detriment of our young men and women in uniform. We cannot in good moral conscience ignore this lie, this crime, lest we encourage future leaders to continue to lie to use to send our kids off to pointless wars. Lying to start a war is more than an impeachable offence; it the highest possible crime a government can commit against their own people. Lying to start a war is not only misappropriation of the nation’s military and the nation’s money under false pretenses, but it is outright murder committed on a massive scale. Lying to start a war is a betrayal of the trust each and every person who serves in the military places in their civilian leadership. By lying to start a war, the Bush administration has told the military fatalities and their families that they have no right to know why they were sent to their deaths. It’s none of their business.

Our nation is founded on the principle of rule with the consent of the governed. Because We The People do not consent to be lied to, a government that lies rules without the consent of the governed, and ruling without the consent of the governed is slavery.

You should be more than angry. You should be in a rage. You should be in a rage no less than that of the families of those young men and women who have been killed and maimed in this war started with a lie.You need to be in a rage and you need to act on that rage because even as I type these words, the same government that lied about Iraq’s nuclear weapons is telling the exact same lies about Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The writing is on the wall; having gotten away with lying to start the war in Iraq, the US Government will lie to start a war in Iran, and after that another, and after that another, and another and another and another because as long as you remain silent, and as long as you remain inactive, the liars have no reason to stop.

As long as you remain inactive, the liars have no reason to stop.

None.

It is time to fire the liars.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is
for good men to do nothing” .
–Edmund Burke

**************************************************

U.S.C. TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 47 § 1001.
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, WHOEVER, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—
(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by ANY trick, scheme, or device a material fact;
(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or
(3) makes or USES any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry; shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.
(b) Subsection (a) does not apply to a party to a judicial proceeding, or that party’s counsel, for statements, representations, writings or documents submitted by such party or counsel to a judge or magistrate in that proceeding.
(c) With respect to any matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch, subsection (a) shall apply only to—
(1) administrative matters, including a claim for payment, a matter related to the procurement of property or services, personnel or employment practices, or support services, or a document required by law, rule, or regulation to be submitted to the Congress or any office or officer within the legislative branch; or
(2) any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee, subcommittee, commission or office of the Congress, consistent with applicable rules of the House or Senate.

**************************************************

SO HERE IS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO DO

The Bush administration and their friends in the media want this story to go away. More than want it to go away, they are in a panic, and will do everything they can to stop it. They will use every dirty trick, every paid shill, every presstitute that they can. Already there is a report that the Michael Jackson jury is “expected” to reach a verdict just before the Conyers hearings.

So, I want YOU to copy this article off, post it everywhere. This article is placed in the public domain. Mail it to your friends. Then send it to your local media and your Congresscritters and have everyone you know do the same. Get on the phones. Flood their offices.

The term is “Viral Marketing” where you get the people who need a product to market it for you. Well, this nation NEEDS this “product”. It needs to know that this war was started with lies. INTENTIONAL lies. And they need to know there is something they can do about it, and that is to start pounding on the doors of power.

Because when a flood of such messages reaches the Congress and the media, what they will hear is that there is no more time. Either they will deal with these lies and the liars, in full, or they will lose all credibility as a government and as media.

A government that lies to the people cannot be the legal government of this land. Make sure that they understand that YOU understand that the Constitution does not allow the government to lie to the people. Calling themselves the government does not make it so if they act unconstitutionally and illegally. The Constitution is the original “Contract with America” and a government that lies stands in clear breach of that contract.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
— “The Declaration of Independence“

US & world politics we may not be able to change, but we can take charge of our health–and the issues are connected, deeply. I’ll try to compactly explain how & why it is so important (& possible) for you to take steps now to inform yourself and preserve your health, so that you can preserve your life, take care of yourself and the community you live in.

These aren’t things you will hear on The Nightly News or even PBS. That’s because those are corporations (Even the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) & all corporations uphold & worship only one thing– the Almighty Dollar. They want you to consume, and if you can’t or won’t, they’ll try to shred your self-esteem to bits. We must recognize that “better stuff” doesnot equal a “better life.” Although we are in an inflationary society that penalizes savings, we must learn how to provide for ourselves–and one of the most important ways to do this is through establishing our good health. Health is the wealth the elite do not want the masses to have.

So…if we accept the premise that the media is highly controlled, as are the schools, as is everything we learn…we know how providing alternate information or dissenting information can be a threat, even in this supposed “democracy.”

There is a bill–S. 1959– before the Senate now (please write or call your Senators) that supposedly quite innocently wises to establish a Committee-something-to-other to study the rise of “homegrown terrorism” and “violent radicalization.” However, this proposed law (we citizens still have the power to stop it) is really vague and can be used to shred the free speech rights of casically anyone who might be a little “fringe.” This “Committee” will try to get support from Academia to legitimate its claims–prove its hypothesis for them–that “homegrown terrorism” is a really big problem, far bigger than the 45 million Americans, say, without health insurance.

Things are getting dark in America, and yes, I want to be alarmist. Here I am passing on what I am reading from multiple sources about how bad things are now and how bad they are likely to get in “the future”–and let’s just say that it’s not a future that will be for everyone to participate in. And I don’t just mean the exclusion of some people from buying a house or retiring early. I mean the killing off the people, though:

And how will people be controlled? This will be the icing on the cake. Already we have show trials in Guantanamo (no Geneva convention rights–no charges against “enemy combatants”–a test for here).

Plus show trials here:

–“plea bargains”

–the mass imprisonment of the poor, unemployed, and (mostly) nonwhite

–the 4th Amendment is dead–courtesy of the “Patriot” Act–Americans need to understand what this act means–this act was swept through Congress before they could read it, conveniently in the hysteria that set in during the few months after the events of 9/11/2001. The FBI can enter your home and search it when you are not around and they do not have to warn you, notify you, or have a warrant. This is insanity. Everyone is a potential criminal, and when that begins to be carried out, by searching us all, it will not be pretty.

The fact of the matter is that more prisons than schools are being built today in America–they can’t build them fast enough, at huge profits for (sub) contractors. And–hold on to your chair–concentration camps–“civilian labor camps”–are being built in America. By the way, in case of emergency, natural or man made, FEMA can take hold and declare martial law. No Constitution involved or required.

A few more points:

>>In 2005, to take effect in May 2008, something called the “REAL ID” was passed, because apparently terrorism is such a huge problem (more than, say, the 40,000 homeless in New York City alone). States will be pressured to force this National ID card onto its citizens because otherwise they will not get Federal Funding. If you, John Q. Citizen, do not submit to this card, you will not be allowed to: enter a Federal/Public Building, take a train, or take a plane. Can anyone say, “Police state”? “Papers, please!”

>>When this fascism does not prove to be enough to control the populace (“cards are not secure”), efforts will be made to put chips in people. Then such chips will be tied to all financial accounts you have, all buying and selling, and all cash will be eliminated. These chips have been invented already–they are called the Verichip–and are being marketed for “medical purposes” like Alzheimer’s patients, despite the facts that the chips are invasive, can have side effects, are extremely vulnerable to identity theft (the fastest growing crime in the US as all our information becomes interlinked with computers), and have not been proven more effective at person identification/medical identification than the good-old-reliable medicalert bracelets.

>>There will be bank runs in America again sometime soon, and 1929 will look like a picnic. This is because our money is worthless, printed by the Federal Reserve cartel of big bankers rather than our own government, and because any gold in fort knox ostensibly used to back up our ‘currency’ (such as it is) has been given away in foreign debt payments a long time ago–no audits of fort knox holdings since the 1950s…gold is over $800 an ounce now, it will move past $1000 in our lifetime, if not soon–people are waking up to the need for hard currency–after this point silver will also become more appealing as an investment…I wish I could be proud of my country, but it’s an oligarchy, not a democracy, and we are massively exploiting other countries and ourselves being screwed.

>> In 2010, or around then, depending on how fast the elite can work–and history shows they’re pretty efficient–there will be something called the North American Union, with one currency, the Amero (and presumably all our dollars will be even more worthless than they are now). If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard about this in “the media” (besides the fact that they are corporations, the CIA has a thing called Operation Mockingbird designed to plant their agents & disinformation into the media–to perpetrate their Psy Ops/ Psychological Operations aka Mind Control–I don’t know a lot about this, but I have no reason to disbelieve this–it’s because it’s an outrageous assault on national sovereignty and has nothing to do with trade. (NAFTA was just the beginning for this.) Supposedly the NAU (North American Union) will be “patterned after the EU,” but that would make it sound harmless, which it is most certainly not. It’s a step toward One-World Government, which the elites like the Rockefellers have wanted since WWII. An Asian Union (“for trade,” of course) is also in the works for 2015, and apparently there is already an African Union (which, again, I don’t know a lot about and would love to be sent information about, but I have no reason to disbelieve that the American media would censor this as well, as it censors other controversies like the idea that AIDS was probably created in the lab, and that certainly more AIDS deaths happen due to liver failure from toxic effects of antiviral cocktails than to the disease itself, etc.)

So…more to say but not now. I am not saying for anyone to liquidate their savings or do anything rash. I certainly don’t have any special information or all the answers. I just do a lot of browsing, which I present in the links here, and I keep an open mind.
See clip on YouTube or Google Video (alas, same difference: “Television is a Goddamned Amusement Park” from Network).

People, please read this and read the proposed law and think about how vague it is and how unlikely “violent radicalization” is, and how precious our rights are, and what is being threatened. Email your senators.

The House Vote was 409 to 2. Not one Democrat opposed the ludicrously-named ‘SAFE Act.’ Two Republicans did: Rep.

Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning presidential candidate from Texas, and Rep. Paul Broun from Georgia. The ‘Congress’ still refuses to read, honor and obey the Constitution. -ed

‘Homegrown Terror’ Act An Attack On Internet Freedom?

By Rep. Ron Paul

Before the US House of Representatives, December 5, 2007

I regret that I was unavoidably out of town on October 23, 2007, when a vote was taken on HR 1955, the Violent Radicalization & Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. Had I been able to vote, I would have voted against this misguided and dangerous piece of legislation. This legislation focuses the weight of the US government inward toward its own citizens under the guise of protecting us against “violent radicalization.”

I would like to note that this legislation was brought to the floor for a vote under suspension of regular order. These so-called “suspension” bills are meant to be non-controversial, thereby negating the need for the more complete and open debate allowed under regular order. It is difficult for me to believe that none of my colleagues in Congress view HR 1955, with its troubling civil liberties implications, as “non-controversial.”

There are many causes for concern in HR 1955. The legislation specifically singles out the Internet for “facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process” in the United States. Such language may well be the first step toward US government regulation of what we are allowed to access on the Internet. Are we, for our own good, to be subjected to the kind of governmental control of the Internet that we see in unfree societies? This bill certainly sets us on that course.

This seems to be an unwise and dangerous solution in search of a real problem. Previous acts of ideologically-motivated violence, though rare, have been resolved successfully using law enforcement techniques, existing laws against violence, and our court system. Even if there were a surge of “violent radicalization” ­ a claim for which there is no evidence ­ there is no reason to believe that our criminal justice system is so flawed and weak as to be incapable of trying and punishing those who perpetrate violent acts.

This legislation will set up a new government bureaucracy to monitor and further study the as-yet undemonstrated pressing problem of homegrown terrorism and radicalization. It will no doubt prove to be another bureaucracy that artificially inflates problems so as to guarantee its future existence and funding. But it may do so at great further expense to our civil liberties. What disturbs me most about this legislation is that it leaves the door wide open for the broadest definition of what constitutes “radicalization.” Could otherwise nonviolent anti-tax, antiwar, or anti-abortion groups fall under the watchful eye of this new government commission? Assurances otherwise in this legislation are unconvincing.

In addition, this legislation will create a Department of Homeland Security-established university-based body to further study radicalization and to “contribute to the establishment of training, written materials, information, analytical assistance and professional resources to aid in combating violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism.” I wonder whether this is really a legitimate role for institutes of higher learning in a free society.

Legislation such as this demands heavy-handed governmental action against American citizens where no crime has been committed. It is yet another attack on our Constitutionally- protected civil liberties. It is my sincere hope that we will reject such approaches to security, which will fail at their stated goal at a great cost to our way of life.

This is now out in the open, folks. The NAU is going to happen unless we send firm messages with out votes that we don’t think overarching megagovernments eroding civil liberties is a good idea. (And if we do think it’s a “good idea,” for “business” or “trade,” to sacrifice our rights, we have truly been brainwashed.)

—

American Independence and Sovereignty

So called free trade deals and world governmental organizations like the International Criminal Court (ICC), NAFTA, GATT, WTO, and CAFTA are a threat to our independence as a nation. They transfer power from our government to unelected foreign elites.

The ICC wants to try our soldiers as war criminals. Both the WTO and CAFTA could force Americans to get a doctor’s prescription to take herbs and vitamins. Alternative treatments could be banned.

The WTO has forced Congress to change our laws, yet we still face trade wars. Today, France is threatening to have U.S. goods taxed throughout Europe. If anything, the WTO makes trade relations worse by giving foreign competitors a new way to attack U.S. jobs.

NAFTA’s superhighway is just one part of a plan to erase the borders between the U.S. and Mexico, called the North American Union. This spawn of powerful special interests, would create a single nation out of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, with a new unelected bureaucracy and money system. Forget about controlling immigration under this scheme.

And a free America, with limited, constitutional government, would be gone forever.

Let’s not forget the UN. It wants to impose a direct tax on us. I successfully fought this move in Congress last year, but if we are going to stop ongoing attempts of this world government body to tax us, we will need leadership from the White House.

We must withdraw from any organizations and trade deals that infringe upon the freedom and independence of the United States of America.

Folks, 1. how about asking yourself if you really need a drug or 2. asking first if a non-invasive herb could do the job of a drug?

Or, change your diet and activity level–for free–so that you don’t get sick, and don’t need a doctor.

—

30-Nov-2007

Dear Cecil:

I recently heard a statistic on a radio talk show that in the U.S. alone there are over 7,000 deaths per year due to mistakes made by pharmacists because of the physicians’ illegible handwriting on the prescription! Can this be true? — Don Jones, Berea, Ohio

Cecil replies:

You’d almost hope so, Don, given that Time magazine saw fit to lead with it: “Doctors’ sloppy handwriting,” a January 2007 article begins, “kills more than 7,000 people annually.” (I’d bet Darvon to doughnuts that’s where the radio personality you heard saw it.) But the author may have had some difficulty deciphering his own notes: the actual stat alluded to — apparently from a 1998 Lancet paper via subsequent reports by the Institute of Medicine — is that each year 7,000 U.S. deaths result from all medication-related errors of any sort, inside and outside hospitals, and not just those tied to poor penmanship.

Which, of course, is still plenty to ponder while popping your next pill, and there’s more where that came from. Scanning an IOM report from last year we learn:

About 1,400 prescribing errors are made per every 1,000 hospital admissions (remember that a typical inpatient may receive 20-plus doses of meds daily), more than 100 of them serious.

Two leading studies of medication errors made by nursing home staff didn’t even include the most common mistake, administering drugs at the wrong time, and still found between 12 and 15 errors per 100 doses.

A 2003 study reported that nearly one in eight prescriptions phoned in to pharmacies contain misinformation, while estimates of pharmacists’ error rate in dispensing drugs range from under 2 percent up to nearly 24 percent. Even using the lowest figure, that’s more than 50 million mistakes a year nationwide.

(Anecdotal evidence break: My assistant Una says she gets the same six prescriptions filled monthly and guesses the pharmacy commits one serious screwup every other month — an 8 percent error rate on refills, for God’s sake.)

But whatever the incidence of medication errors (and more figures got thrown around last week following the heparin overdose reportedly given to Dennis Quaid’s infant twins), it’s hard to pin down the role of handwriting. One small-scale study from 2002 found that 15 percent of handwritten medical records at a Spanish hospital were unclear due to legibility problems (the surgeons’ notes were the worst), a 2001 British paper reported that more than 10 percent of handwritten prescriptions contained errors, and U.S. studies have found that 20 percent of prescriptions or more were unreadable or readable only with effort. Some experts estimate that maybe a quarter of medication errors are due to illegibility. But time-honored notions aside, comparative studies disagree over whether those who’ve earned an MD do tend to have worse handwriting than those who haven’t. Maybe it only seems that way when that little scrap of paper could determine whether you live or die.

By the way, folks, don’t let this mass-media stuff about handwriting errors fool you into the propaganda that health records really need to be “computerized” and scannable and available everywhere, or even in a chip (or verichip), because suddenly doctors are just so stupid. There is a technology to get your records quickly from one doctor to another. It is called a fax machine. These medical errors are caused by overmedication just as much as handwriting flaws. Not to mention that the FDA takes bribes and approves drugs and foods that have not been fully tested and which are harmful (aspartame, vioxx, etc).

Seriously, are people so dumbed down that they 1. cannot add; 2. cannot remember to bring cash around; 3. or are so selfish and ignorant that they cannot trust others to make change for them, so they’d rather appoint computers to do it? Have we not seen that computers are not infallible?

It’s insulting–the idea that we need “smart cards” because the people who own them are dumb.

People, use cash. If you don’t have the money in your wallet, you probably shouldn’t be buying it. Don’t become a debt slave. Or write a damn check. If your “merchant” will not take checks, ask them why. Start a fuss. Most ask for ID when taking checks anyway. Most can process checks electronically anyway, getting the money almost as fast as a credit transaction. And, finally, banks scan your check images. So why not use the checks you get with your account? It seems to me harder to forge a check than to commit fraud with a stolen credit card. But I wouldn’t know; I haven’t seen any data defending checks anymore. I doubt the mass media would tell anyone. They are all for us falling into line with these progressively insecure technologies designed for us to spend more–and if our identities get stolen in the process, well, that’s just a necessary danger of modern living. Don’t fall for it.

Sony said Thursday that it and four other Japanese companies would set up a joint venture to promote the use of FeliCa noncontact cards, used for ticketing and electronic money transactions. The joint venture, which includes trading house Mitsui & Co and printing and electronics components company Dai Nippon Printing, will be established in January with capitalization of 400 million yen ($3.63 million). Sony will take a 60 percent stake, it said.

Plastic cards equipped with Sony’s FeliCa chips, which can be scanned for data transfers, are widely used in Japan and other Asian countries, including China and Singapore. Sony has shipped more than 250 million FeliCa chips since 1996. In Japan, electronics makers put the chips in mobile phones, turning handsets into e-wallets and e-tickets.

Some of the more relevant, less repetitive articles I come across…these are just three from the wide collection at infowars.com–which, in turn, is culled from many others. This trend cannot be denied; consequently, it is our responsibility to understand and inform our legislators and power-makers that we do not want this invisibly sewn into our clothes, or planted into our flesh.
—

There’s not a lot of middle ground on the subject of implanting electronic identification chips in humans.

Advocates of technologies like radio frequency identification tags say their potentially life-saving benefits far outweigh any Orwellian concerns about privacy. RFID tags sewn into clothing or even embedded under people’s skin could curb identity theft, help identify disaster victims and improve medical care, they say.

Critics, however, say such technologies would make it easier for government agencies to track a person’s every movement and allow widespread invasion of privacy. Abuse could take countless other forms, including corporations surreptitiously identifying shoppers for relentless sales pitches. Critics also speculate about a day when people’s possessions will be tagged–allowing nosy subway riders with the right technology to examine the contents of nearby purses and backpacks.

“Invasion of privacy is going to be impossible to avoid,” said Katherine Albrecht, the founder and director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, or CASPIAN, a watchdog group created to monitor the use of data collected in the so-called loyalty programs used increasingly by supermarkets. Albrecht worries about a day when “every physical item is registered to its owner.”

The overriding idea behind tagging people with chips–whether through implants or wearable devices such as bracelets–is to improve identification and, consequently, tighten access to restricted information or physical areas.

But on top of civil liberties and other policy issues, such technologies face visceral objections from many people who frown on the idea of being implanted with tags that can track them like migrating tuna. Complaints have led several companies to abandon plans to use RFID technologies in products, much less in human bodies.

The concept of implanting chips for tracking purposes was introduced to the general public more than a decade ago, when pet owners began using them to keep tabs on dogs and cats. The notion of embedding RFID tags in the human body, though, remained largely theoretical until the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, when a technology executive saw firefighters writing their badge numbers on their arms so that they could be identified in case they became disfigured or trapped.

Richard Seelig, vice president of medical applications at security specialist Applied Digital Solutions, inserted a tracking tag in his own arm and told the company’s CEO that it worked. A new product, the VeriChip, was born.

Applied Digital formed a division named after the chip and says it has sold about 7,000 of the electronic tags. An estimated 1,000 have been inserted in humans, mostly outside the United States, with no harmful physical side effects reported from the subcutaneous implants, the company said.

“It is used instead of other biometric applications,” such as fingerprints, said Angela Fulcher, vice president of marketing at VeriChip, which is based in Palm Beach, Fla. The basic technology comes from Digital Angel, a sister company under the Applied corporate umbrella that has sold thousands of tags for identifying pets and other animals.

VeriChip makes 11-millimeter RFID tags that are implanted in the fatty tissue below the right tricep. When near a scanner, the chip is activated and emits an ID number. When a person’s tag number matches an ID in a database, the person is allowed to enter a secured room or complete a financial transaction.

So far, enhancing physical security–controlling access to buildings or other areas–remains the most common application. RFID chips cannot track someone in real time the way the Global Positioning System does, but they can provide information such as whether a particular individual has gone through a door.

Latin American customers are looking at both technologies for security purposes, which partly explains why some of VeriChip’s early clients included Mexico’s attorney general, as well as a Mexican agency trying to curb the country’s kidnapping epidemic, and commercial distributors in Venezuela and Colombia.

The value of these technologies was underscored recently by a CNET News.com reader who wrote from Puerto Rico to inquire about their development. In her e-mail, Frances Pabon said she hopes that RFID or GPS technologies can be used for her husband, who must travel through neighborhoods in San Juan that are infested with crack dealers.

“I think safeguarding his safety doesn’t necessarily violate his privacy,” she wrote. “And if I am made to choose between keeping him safe versus keeping him private, I’d rather keep him safe and then change private data such as credit cards, bank accounts, etc., after.”

Safety has been a primary driver in some U.S. applications as well. An Arizona company called Technology Systems International, for example, says it has improved security in prisons with an RFID-like system for inmates and guards. The company’s products came out in 2001 and are based on technology licensed from Motorola, which created it for the U.S. military to find gear lost in battle.

TSI’s wristbands for inmates transmit signals every two seconds to a battery of antennas mounted in the prison facility. By examining the time the signal is received by each antenna, a computer can determine the exact location of each prisoner at any given time and can reconstruct prisoners’ movements later, if necessary to investigate their actions.

Since the technology was installed at participating prisons, violence is down up to 60 percent in some facilities, said TSI President Greg Oester, who says the wristbands are designed for the “uncooperative user.” TSI, a division of security company Alanco Technologies, has installed the system in four prisons and will add a fifth soon.

“Inmates know they are being monitored and know they will get caught. The word spreads very quickly,” Oester said. “It increases the safety in facilities.”

In a California prison that uses the TSI technology, an inmate confessed to stabbing another prisoner 20 minutes after authorities showed him data from his radio transmitter that placed him in the victim’s cell at the time of the stabbing, Oester said. A women’s prison in the state has begun a pilot program to test whether the technology prevents sexual assaults.

Conversely, at an Illinois prison, Oester said, convicts have pointed to this sort of data as a way to prove that they weren’t involved in prison incidents. Guards have similar tags, embedded in pagers rather than wristbands, which set off an alarm if they are removed or tampered with.

Tagging hospital patients…and alumni?
Beyond law enforcement, the technology is drawing interest from a variety of industries that have pressing security needs. Companies that operate highly sensitive facilities, such as nuclear power plants, are looking at TSI’s technology.

Hospitals in Europe and the United States are also experimenting with inserting tags in ID bracelets. The Jacobi Medical Center in New York, along with Siemens Business Services, has launched a pilot program that will outfit more than 200 patients with radio bracelets.

This technology is designed to enable various health care professionals to obtain patient information such as X-rays and medical histories from a database securely and more quickly. The system will also use antennas to track individuals as they walk about the hospital and send alerts if a patient begins to collapse. Other pilot systems are being tested specifically to monitor patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

As such tagging systems become more widely known, some industries that hadn’t been expected to use the technology are considering innovative applications of it. A South Carolina firearms maker, FN Manufacturing, is evaluating the technology for use in “smart guns” equipped with grip sensors that would allow only their owners to use them.

In a less violent but practical application, Ray Hogan of Princeton University’s alumni association has contemplated distributing RFID bracelets among meeting attendees to track attendance at events that have multiple components. The technology would let organizers see which programs attendees find most valuable by virtue of how long they stay. Like others, however, Hogan says privacy issues may well keep the idea from becoming a reality.

When such technologies are employed, they can be even more effective if implanted in the body. Supporters and critics both say RFID tags under the skin would invariably increase the volume and quality of personal data, with the benefit of, at the very least, reducing the margin of error for misidentification in the event of a disaster.

The problem, detractors say, is that the vast quantities of accumulated data would be vulnerable to theft and abuse. They cite historical practices of retail establishments, which for years have listened in on customer conversations and viewed consumer behavior on remote cameras to improve sales. Supermarkets routinely collect data about individual shoppers’ purchases and buying habits through “loyalty programs,” along with credit card and electronic banking transactions.

Even random individuals could spy on those with tags, because today’s RFID technologies do not yet have the processing power to encrypt information. “I don’t see how you can get enough power into those things” to encrypt data, said Whitfield Diffie, a fellow and security expert at Sun Microsystems.

Some consumers have described scenarios in which a hacker could extract a person’s identification number with an RFID reader, create a chip with the same number and then impersonate them. But even if such chip forgery were possible, alerts would probably be sounded as soon as a system detected that the same person was in two different places at once.

Still, implanting RFID chips could vastly increase the potential for police surveillance of ordinary citizens. Conceivably, every wall socket could become an RFID reader that feeds into a government database.

Critics contend that if tagging gets out of control, the day will eventually come when the cops will be able to trace junk thrown in a public trash can back to the person who tossed it.

“Do you want the people in power to have that much power?” Albrecht asked rhetorically. “The infrastructure obstacle has been overcome. It is called electricity and the Internet. ”

What the FDA Won’t Tell You about the VeriChip

A little electronic capsule, smaller than a dime, could be one of the biggest technological advances in how we share and store private medical records. It may also be one of the most controversial.

Known as the VeriChip, it is a microchip that is implanted under a person’s skin, and then scanned with a special reader device to reveal important medical data about that person.

Applied Digital, the Florida-based company that makes the VeriChip, hopes the implant will revolutionize how doctors obtain medical information, particularly in emergency situations. Theoretically, if a person can’t speak, medics could scan that person and quickly be linked to a database that would provide crucial information like the patient’s identity, blood type and drug allergies.

Dr. Csaba Magassi, a plastic surgeon in Northern Virginia, is among a nationwide network of doctors who are ready and waiting to implant the VeriChip into willing patients. His office receives calls daily from people inquiring about the chip.

Dr. Magassi said, “If you are in an auto accident, [and] you are unconscious, they could scan you, know exactly who you are; your medical history can easily be printed out onto the hospital record.”

Dr. Magassi added, “If a patient comes in requesting the VeriChip, I usually tell them it takes between two and five minutes to place the device in place. A needle which contains the VeriChip is inserted. The needle pushes the device through, and it is implanted permanently. Put a bandaid on and you are done.”

Dr. Magassi demonstrated the procedure for CBN News on an apple. Once the microchip was inserted, the hand-held scanner read the number on the chip using radio frequency waves. Think of it as a human barcode.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the VeriChip implant for medical use in humans in October, a huge victory for Applied Digital.

In an effort to jumpstart interest, the company launched the “Get Chipped” campaign. It is offering a discount to the first few hundred people who get the implant, and also plans to donate hundreds of scanners to the nation’s trauma units to promote use of the VeriChip.

But in a letter obtained by CBN News from the FDA to the VeriChip makers, the microchip is not completely safe. In fact, the letter lists a whole host of health risks associated with the device, including “adverse tissue reaction,” “electrical hazards” and “MRI incompatibility.”

Applied Digital and the Food and Drug Administration refused our requests for an interview to discuss these risks.

Consumer privacy advocate Katherine Albrecht said, “There are millions of people that have read the press reports about all the positives of this technology, but really have no idea about its dangers.”

Albrecht strongly opposes the VeriChip for the physical risks it poses, as well as the privacy risks. She has been called “the Erin Brokovich of RFID chips.”

On her Web site, http://www.spychips.com, Albrecht reveals the potential dangers of the VeriChip and other radio frequency identification methods.

Albrecht said, “There’s a very serious concern that, already, engineers and people who think along those lines are already thinking like hackers and criminals — they’re already starting to say, how can this system be compromised, how can it be abused? When you are dealing with a radio frequency device, by design, it is transmitting info using invisible radio waves at a distance. In this case, that distance is only a couple of inches or a couple of feet so it’s not a huge distance, but it means that anyone who can get within a couple of inches or a few feet of you, even with a reader device they have hidden in a backpack or a purse, would be able to scan that number, obtain that info and potentially duplicate it.”

And it is not just private medical information at stake. The microchip implant technology has been around for several years now, and has been used for a variety of different applications.

Thousands of chips have been implanted in pets by veterinarians for identification purposes. Livestock is now chipped to track things like mad-cow disease. Manufacturers are putting chips in products like clothing and shoes for marketing research.

In Mexico, the attorney general and his top aides were chipped for security purposes. And, in Spain at the Baja Beach Club, patrons can get a microchip with their financial information implanted, so they can pay for their cocktails with a swipe of the arm. As these pictures seem to suggest, getting chipped is fun and painless.

Applied Digital also launched a brand new application for the chip last year called the “VeriPay.” This implant would hold all of a person’s financial information. Rather than swipe a card or pay cash, consumers would scan their wrists for purchases. And, if a swipe of the wrist becomes too troublesome, there are already prototypes made of doorway portals that can simply scan a person and their purchases as they walk through the door.

Allbrecht said, “I think there is a very real concern that, down the road, such a chip would become mandatory. And not necessarily initially, but it would be voluntary, in the same way let’s say as credit cards or a drivers license is voluntary. No one forces you to have a driver’s license or to have a cell phone, but yet the vast majority of people do, because it is very difficult to function in a normal society without it.”

For now, though, a microchip implant is voluntary. Only a few thousand chips have been sold and only a fraction of those have been implanted in humans.

Setting the stage for controversial tracking technology, the satellite telecommunications company ORBCOMM has signed an agreement with VeriChip Corp., maker of the world’s first implantable radio frequency identification microchip.

VeriChip, a subsidiary of Applied Digital , will work with ORBCOMM to develop and market new military, security and healthcare applications in the U.S. and around the world, the company said.

As WorldNetDaily reported , Applied Digital has created and successfully field-tested a prototype of an implant for humans with GPS, or global positioning satellite, technology.

Once inserted into a human, it can be tracked by GPS technology and the information relayed wirelessly to the Internet, where an individual’s location, movements and vital signs can be stored in a database for future reference.

“ORBCOMM’s relationship with VeriChip provides yet another new and important industry that will use the ORBCOMM satellite system and its ground infrastructure network to transmit messages globally,” ORBCOMM CEO Jerry Eisenberg said.

Initially, after privacy concerns and verbal protests over marketing the technology for government use , Applied backed away from public discussion about such implants and the possibility of using them to usher in a “cashless society.”

ORBCOMM, a global satellite telecommunications company, today announced that it has executed an agreement with VeriChip(TM) Corporation, a subsidiary of Applied Digital (NASDAQ:ADSX), to be its provider of satellite and telecommunication services for applications to be developed for use with the world’s first implantable radio frequency identification (RFID) microchip, also called VeriChip(TM).

Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will also work together to develop and market new military, security, and healthcare applications for use in the United States and around the world.

VeriChip(TM) Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Applied Digital. The VeriChip product is a subdermal RFID microtransponder that can be used in a variety of security, financial, emergency identification and healthcare applications. About the size of a grain of rice, each VeriChip Device contains a unique verification number that is captured by briefly passing a proprietary scanner over the VeriChip. In October 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared VeriChip for medical applications in the United States. VeriChip is not a FDA-regulated device with regards to its security, financial, personal identification/safety applications.

“ORBCOMM’s relationship with VeriChip(TM) provides yet another new and important industry that will use the ORBCOMM satellite system and its ground infrastructure network to transmit messages globally,” Jerry Eisenberg, CEO of ORBCOMM, said.

About ORBCOMM

ORBCOMM is a wireless telecommunications company that provides reliable, cost effective data communications services to customers around the world through its unique low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite network and global ground infrastructure. A diverse customer base, including industry leaders General Electric, Caterpillar Inc., Volvo Trucks, XATA, and AirIQ, uses ORBCOMM services to track, monitor and control mobile and fixed assets including trucks, containers, marine vessels, locomotives, heavy machinery, pipelines, oil wells, utility meters and storage tanks anywhere in the world. For more information call 1-800-ORBCOMM or visit its Web site at www.ORBCOMM.com.

About Applied Digital

Applied Digital develops innovative security products for consumer, commercial and government sectors worldwide. Its unique and often proprietary products provide security for people, animals, the food supply, government/military arena and commercial assets. Included in this diversified product line are RFID applications, end-to-end food safety systems, GPS/Satellite communications and telecomm and security infrastructure, positioning Applied Digital as the leader of Security Through Innovation. Applied Digital is the owner of a majority position in Digital Angel Corporation (AMEX: DOC). For more information, visit the company’s website at http://www.adsx.com .

This release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding ORBCOMM’s expected commercial operations. These forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions and ORBCOMM’s actual results and operations may be materially different from those expressed or implied by such statements.

I’m just copying and pasting some of the easiest to understand material I’ve gleaned from my own research, because there is a fair quantity of information/ interpretation/editorials out there and it is true that this information needs to be known, but people are busy.
—

Assuming there is no such thing as a mind control implant, the accounts appearing in our in-boxes (and across the internet) raise disturbing questions about our society. Is our ubiquitous surveillance technology creating a surge in neurosis and mental illness? Research suggests that people do tend to get paranoid if they believe they have no way of knowing when they are being watched. Perhaps the rise in CCTV cameras, database profiling, and guerilla marketing is making us all a little nuts, and some people express it more overtly than others.

Living in this surveillance and power-mad century, there’s a wise Chinese proverb we should all keep in mind:

“The fire you kindle for your enemy often burns you more than it burns him.”

While some people may, at first glance, think it’s a good idea to tag the more dangerous and unsavory elements of society with a computer chip, it’s actually a very bad idea in the long run. An industry that’s built around tagging human beings against their will, whether they’re illegal immigrants, criminals, or even mass murderers, will grow fat and powerful and bureaucratic from feeding at the trough of our tax dollars. An infrastructure of human tagging will take root, then, like all industries, it will want to see its market expand. (Think of the prison-industrial complex today — or any powerful lobby.)

The human-implant-prison-industrial-complex will shmooze at political fundraisers and send lobbyists to urge politicians to expand the mandatory chipping program to other “markets.” They’ll urge the tagging of parolees and ex-felons. In fact, they’ll say, society would be safer if all criminals — rapists, drug dealers, prostitutes, thieves, and domestic abusers — had a chip implant, along with gun law violators, marijuana smokers, drunk drivers, custody violators, tax cheats, habitual traffic violators, shoplifters, protesters who won’t stay in their designated First Amendment zones, rowdy college revelers, and eventually the guy who didn’t fill out the right paperwork to add a deck onto the back of his house.

Once the mandatory chipping lobby really gets going, they won’t stop at criminals. For our own safety, they’ll get the lawmakers to agree that we ought to chip nuclear plant workers, anyone handling biological or chemical agents, drivers transporting hazardous materials, anyone owning a gun, anyone working with children, anyone preparing food for public consumption, anyone…

Get the picture yet?

No matter who you are and how saintly a life you lead, I can almost promise you that if we light this fire to burn the pedophiles, somewhere down the road it will burn us and our children, too.

Big Brother has surrounded us with dried kindling and he’s hankering for a match. Don’t hand it to him.

You know, because some people use the Internet in possibly bad ways, everyone has to be tracked and censored.

This is the “drink a glass of water, become a heroin addict” kind of non-logic, non-sequitur logic that somehow (perhaps because of money?) holds a lot of sway in our government and our society.

What’s next, opening and reading the mails?

We don’t need another law to supposedly “probe” what might be the causes of “homegrown” “terrorism.” Here or abroad, around the world, terrorism is caused by:
–poverty; exclusion from society;
–injustice; disparities in access to education and opportunities;
–poor living conditions;
–being dominated and controlled by governments. i.e., not being free.

This isn’t rocket science. Don’t be fooled by this window-dressing. What provides safety is true prosperity–when you can provide for yourself and your family without being in debt, without working so many hours that you can’t think straight, can’t be free, can’t pursue your own interests.

This is really insulting–big brands and stores need to learn CONSUMERS ARE NOT CRIMINALS.

I do not even shop at stores that require me to check my bag (except, painfully, the occasional record shop)–I hate this “practice.” Heaven forbid I should do more than 1 thing a day. I do not want to trust a clerk with my bag in a cubbyhole, thanks…besides, you have cameras anyway, cut the crap…do we need to be doubly invasive? Checked bags and cameras? If you have one, you don’t need the other.

Support small businesses instead. They don’t want to do this. It’s the large brands and the big-box retail that are greedy and paranoid about “shoplifting.” But, at the same time, they love all the valuable “marketing information” this supposed “inventory control” tells them. This is one kind of “consumer research” that doesn’t need to happen.
Conventional stores employ sweatshop labor.
Boycott Levi’s, Dockers, and other big clothing brands, megabrands, and umbrella-brands until they take a PUBLIC stand that they will NOT use RFID in their clothes to be kept inside the clothes (sewn into the clothes), to remain in the clothes after their sale to consumers.

—from the spychips.com blog:

April 28, 2006

Tell Levi Strauss What You Think about RFID

Main Number: (415)501-6000
This number goes to the main switchboard. The operator can switch you to Consumer Relations. Remember. If you call the toll-free Consumer Relations number on the Levi Strauss website, your phone number can be obtained.

Email: info@levi.com
This email address goes to a general email box. Consumer Relations would like you to use a special online form, but that doesn’t give you a record of your comment. Please share a copy with us. You can email me at Liz@spychips.com.

RFID technology can easily be abused, and we believe it is essential that all the societal issues be explored before it is deployed. We hope Levi Strauss will be the company to step forward and begin the needed dialogue.

The current Levi Strauss RFID test reportedly involves RFID hang tags that can be clipped from the garments at checkout. But as anyone who has read “Spychips” knows, the RFID industry has discussed affixing tags on and within products and tracking consumers through them–a practice that could usher in an Orwellian surveillance society. On the clothing front, companies have talked about embedding RFID tags in the seams of garments and in flexible clothing labels. There has even been talk of using threads woven into fabric as antennas.

That’s why it is crucial to counter *any* attempts at tagging individual consumer items now. Once the RFID infrastructure is in place, the nature of tagging–and the tracking done via the tags–can change overnight.

—
Do not pass S. 1959!
I am not a criminal because I keep a blog and use the internet to post my political beliefs.

I am very concerned about how vague this law defines ideological crimes or incitement to crimes. I am concerned about my civil liberties, and how this law can easily make almost anyone into a “terrorist” should they try to communicate unconventional ideas about our government, or about “social change.”

This law is a step in the wrong direction, a step toward controlling people. This law does not promote security and prosperity. I would like my elected officials to promote security through means of ensuring economic equality and justice, not through increasing militarization and increasingly punitive laws.

Please do not attempt to censor me, or anyone in the general public; do not censor the Internet or the Press. I will have no part in your military-industrial-corporate complex. I will not take a microchip in the future. I will not be catalogued. I am not a worker bee. I am not a product. I am an intrinsically valuable human being and I will not be sold out for the power-interests of others. I pay taxes, and am saddened that they are used for fueling never-ending wars. Will you take a real stand to fully investigate the events of 9/11/2001? Or will you be part of the elite group who labels questioners “radicals” and “terrorists”? I am an artist and would love to be doing my art, not writing to you. In a free country, I could live in peace. If this law is passed, my art and my vocation could make me into a criminal.

They always need more power, don’t they? They never have enough power to do their job, so they always need more power.

One can vaguely remember a time when the legislative didn’t do the absolute bidding of the executive.

Now you could speak for any kind of “social change” and be considered a terrorist.

I would love big government if it actually fed the hungry, gave shelter to the homeless, gave places for drug users to kick their habits, stopped making teens all out to have mood disorders and in need of toxic, psychotropic, flouridated medication, and gave everyone meaningful education, access to information, decent housing, clean water and food, and employment. Since our current big government isn’t doing any of those things, and since our taxes are actually going to pay off the national debt and the cartel of banks known as the Federal Reserve, perhaps we should have a small government, or dismantle this government and make a new one. Preferably one without an electoral college. We still have the right to revolution, you know. It’s what was done in 1776.

***Disclaimer to overzealous law enforcement: I am not advocating the use of force or violence, physical, intellectual, or otherwise. What I am advocating is a serious reflection on the system and its change or transformation into a new and just system, or the adoption of such a system. I am not advocating the physical or other kind of harm to anyone under any circumstances. It is very important, above all, that we use democratic means of voting and press/reporting to improve our lives and the lives of others and educate people about what they can do to make positive personal and community changes, without the use of violence, force, or domination whatsoever. It is essential that we do not use the ploys or tactics of punitive and authoritarian systems. It is important to build our strength through common awareness and collective actions such as economic boycotts, letter-writing, community groups, town hall meetings, and so on.

I am not representing any group or organization. I am a private concerned citizen. I am maintaining this personal web-page or web-blog as a way of exercising my right to free speech. This personal web page is for the information of others, to communicate and start dialogue with others. Again, I am in no way whatsoever calling for any kind of violent action or any kind of action that could be perceived as violent or aggressive. I am not condoning the breaking of any laws.

I’d really like to see how they intend to do this.
It’s lip service. There is no other mention of how civil liberties intend to be protected, other than a statement in the next section about how provisions of this law are to be “racially neutral.” That means equal-opportunity accusations of terrorism. We can’t have race-blind and need blind college admissions, but law and military enforcement and urban warfare agents will seize you and your assets no matter what ethnicity you are.

“Ideologically based violence”= not defined in the law. Essentially “thought crime.”
And is no one else disturbed that Google (a search engine) owns/controls YouTube and Blogger?
What happens when the Internet becomes censored? The mainstream media already is.
Anyone who doesn’t live to buy or sell–if you’re poor, say–well, you become a prisoner, all ready for one of FEMA’s concentration camps (search YouTube for “conentration camps being built for US citizens”).
Also, it’s amazing what’s a “Federal” crime nowadays. Because internet postings can be seen across state lines, be aware that Internet postings can be seen as a Federal Felony. Again, the security problem is you.

now, a single person exercising their right to free speech is an easily traced potential criminal.

how is “violent radicalization” defined? how is a “threat” construed? not defined in this law, unless you consider these vague terms not authoritarian.
what happened to “clear and present” danger?
what happened to “innocent until proven guilty,” not the other way around.
americans are so doped up on high fructose corn syrup, aspartame/nutrasweet/neotame/splenda, ritalin, prozac, synthetic birth control, xenoestrogens, plastics leaching, genetically modified organisms (in most processed foods, especially those with corn or soy) and flouride in the drinking water lowering their IQ.

welcome to the control grid. if you question the grid, you are a threat. by the way, we don’t disclose what we do with threats, because we’re not a democracy anymore.

If this bill is passed, and becomes law, your words and actions could be considered terrorism. S 1959 EVISCERATES FREE SPEECH, and empowers the govt. to declare ANYTHING they deem an “extremist belief system”, instantly make you a terrorist, resulting in stripping of US citizenship, torture, and/or execution, with no habeas corpus rights, no ability to challenge even in the US Supreme Court.

Contact your Senator and let them know they will be looking for another job if they vote yes on this bill, which is now introduced into the Senate as S.1959 THIS BILL **MUST NOT** BECOME LAW, PERIOD.

If this becomes law, your words could be considered “promoting an extremist belief system”, and all they have to say is that you are using PLANNED OR THREATENED *FORCE* (DOES NOT HAVE TO BE VIOLENCE) –FORCE by exposing CORRUPTION, CRIMINALITY against “THE CIVILIAN POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES, *****OR ANY SEGMENT THEREOF” READ THE BILL MANY TIMES AND VERY CAREFULLY–YOU ARE THE TERRORIST (WHICH MEANS THEY CAN STRIP YOUR CITIZENSHIP, AND HAVE YOU TORTURED AND EXECUTED).

Senate is back in session today, do not hesitate, call, fax, email your Senator ASAP.